


when your mouth begins to call me hunter

by thought



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: D/s, F/F, Kink, Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:09:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5164985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crazy. Prophet. Interface. Friend.<br/>Shaw wants to put Root into a category. Root wants to put Shaw on her knees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when your mouth begins to call me hunter

Root pushes Sameen up against a wall and the brick at her back scratches like skinned knees on schoolyard pavement, and the cliche burns like shame in the back of her throat. She waits for Root to come in, waits for that first note of teeth or nails or fists that will make the rest worth it, but it never comes. Root holds her wrists in one hand --long fingers, hands that can cover Sameen's entirely on a coffee shop table or a gun-- and one hand cradles her face, thumb in the soft space under her jaw, fingers spread out like spider legs over hot skin. Root's leg is pressed between hers and she smells like leather and perfume, like girls with shiny hair and sharp heels who smile kindly at you on the train but never step close enough to touch.

"You done, sweetie?"

Sameen jerks her head back but Root's hand stays with her, keeps the pressure, and now she's just forced to look up at her at a sharper angle, like the fucking height difference isn't apparent enough. She's smiling that obnoxious little smile, all condescension and disconnect, and it makes Sameen want to burn down everything she cares about until she shows some sign of humanity. Root stays very still even while Sameen fights to get closer, to get a reaction. The bricks are snagging uncomfortably on her hair and the way Root is pressed right up against her front is making something thick and heavy expand in her chest, pushing the air out of her lungs and raising sweat on her neck.

She knows what Root's waiting for. She also knows five ways to incapacitate or kill Root from this position just off the top of her head, and it's a fifty/fifty chance what she's going to do. That being said it isn't like she's got plans for the evening, and the way Root's tongue keeps flicking out to rub at the chapped skin on her lips makes Sameen think of what else she could be doing with her tongue. She struggles a bit more for the show of it, and because she still hasn't figured out if Root likes the fight. Root tilts her head, watches her like a piece of code she's confident will compile correctly.

When Sameen stops struggling she does it deliberately, lets her whole body go lax and pliant between the wall and Root, tips her cheek into Root's palm. It's important to remind her that it's a choice, but Root still looks like she's won when she leans in to kiss her. When she bites hard enough on Sameen's lip to draw blood it feels like a reward.

*

A lot of people have told Sameen that she's something less than human, textbooks and teachers and lovers throwing around words like 'heartless' and 'robot' and 'sociopath' like they expect to be the stone that finally shatters the glass. She knows that there's something wired differently in her head, has done her research. That's the thing about human bodies-- lots of them come out different or a bit broken or fragile or complicated. Her GPA all the way through med school was perfect. She knows these things intimately, and she's still not sure how pointing out a basic fact about somebody is supposed to hurt them. Sameen is human, and in her case that means she doesn't flinch at gunfire, and her understanding of happiness is a full stomach or a dog's fur under her hand, and that it took her until she was sixteen to connect the shortness of breath and urge to lash out with the word "anger".

But that's the thing that nobody seems to get. Because people look at her and think 'robot, broken', and they look at Root, with her big eyes and delighted giggle and obsessive dedication and they maybe think 'broken', but they always think human. Sameen doesn't. Not after getting to know her. It's a lot of things, but a big part of it is because, frustration and resentfulness aside, she respects Root. And Root has sat across from her at a shitty pizza place (Root always pays when they go anywhere, and someone else would probably overthink this) and explained with complete conviction that she has ascended, that she's become something more than human. In the same breath she'd called herself hardware, a peripheral device, and it had taken Sameen a few weeks to understand that to Root the ideas are not mutually exclusive.

Root's crazy, don't get her wrong. She can list off at least three diagnosis (and crazy is not one of them, the disapproving professional in the back of her head reminds her) and that's just with her limited observation and even more limited psych rotation. But Root spent twenty years thinking of people, herself included, as bad code, and from what Sameen knows of her life nobody had done much to prove her wrong. So if Root feels more true to herself by likening herself to a robot or a computer, who is Sameen to argue? Besides, they're living in the age of all-seeing AI and with The Machine babbling away in Root's ear twenty-four/seven she's probably the closest thing they're going to get to a prophet in their lifetime. Sameen stopped believing in a god when she was eight. Root started when she was thirty-three. Sameen has never seen any proof that Allah cares about humanity, but she sees The Machine send the numbers of people to be saved every day. There is no space inside of her for faith, but she can see where Root is coming from.

Sometimes, Sameen will catch the way Root looks at other people when they're out in the city together. Root looks at Sameen like she's something precious, like she's endlessly fascinating, and then she will look away and the sheer disdain she has for most everyone else bleeds through. The reminder of Root's active dissociation from other people always manages to startle her, just a bit, because her interactions with Sameen are always fucking dripping in feelings and trust and all the bullshit that goes along with it. It doesn't bother her, The Machine gives Root enough of a moral compass to keep her on their side and Sameen has been nothing but open with Root about her inability to return the other woman's dedicated admiration and affection. The others don't see it. They think Root has reformed, is learning the error of her ways. Sameen does not think they understand just how deeply Root has tied her identity to The Machine.

"She updated my programming," Root says lightly, cutting an apple into slices with her pocket knife. Sameen watches the flick of metal through her fingers and thinks that complex technology, circuits and wires and chips, will always be more breakable than flesh and blood.

She rolls her eyes. "Whatever, Spock," she says, and then she has to sit through forty-five minutes of Star Trek babble because she's apparently that idiot who mentions Star Trek around a nerd and she has to pay the price.

*

Root is not a sadist. At least not in the uncomplicated, straight forward way that Sameen has encountered. This is possibly the only thing about her that takes Sameen legitimately by surprise. Considering their first meeting involves Root holding a hot iron an inch away from her skin like a kid in a candy store, she thinks she can be excused the assumption. Even after they start fucking, it takes a while to pin down what's going on. Because Root will hurt her, will press Sameen down on the bed or the couch or the floor and happily find a variety of creative ways to inflict as much pain as Sameen wants. The first time Sameen shoved a knife in Root's hand and guided her movements to press the tip against her sternum and slide down, Root had gotten a faintly panicky, confused expression, and when they were done she had zip tied Sameen to the headboard and spent twenty minutes carefully cleaning each shallow cut and petting and cuddling her like she'd just come back from war.

Another night Root had spent half the time trying to push Sameen down to her knees, or hold her hands above her head or behind her back, or dictate the fucking pace, and the more irritated Sameen got the more confused Root had seemed until she'd finally literally fucking walked away in the middle of sex. When Sameen had demanded an explanation, Root had spun on her with tears glinting on her lashes and her hands clasped behind her back.

"I don't know what you want from me," she'd said. "And I'm incredibly angry with you, which is not the kind of reaction that's OK. so I'm going to go. This is me safewording, I'm sorry."

Sameen actually started trying to puzzle shit out after that. Some of the best sex she'd had was born of anger, and she was pretty sure a safeword was a Fifty Shades of Gray thing-- she knows the general concept, had heard it tossed around as a joke now and then, but she had no fucking clue how it was applicable to what she and Root were doing. Or at least, she hadn't wanted to think about it. Bad enough she'd broken her three night rule for Root, there was no need to make things even more complex.

But apparently there was a need. Sameen sits Root down on the edge of an anonymous hotel bed sometime in September and crouches in front of her, hands on her thighs. "Listen. You get that I like it when you hurt me, right? You're making me feel good."

Root smirks, that automatic playful response that seems always near the surface when she's around Shaw. "I kind of figured that out, sweetie."

Sameen glares, frustrated. She should've planned this better. "Yeah never mind," she mutters, and topples Root backwards onto the bedspread. Root, for once, lets it go, but Sameen stretches her arms up and holds onto the headboard without being asked and she sees that spark of consideration behind Root's eyes, can almost hear the hamster wheels in her stupid genius brain speeding up.

It's easy to play things a bit submissive, easy to let Root take a bit more control. It isn't like she squanders it. Sameen doesn't quite get the appeal, but it seems to please Root and Sameen is all about everybody having a good time when it comes to sex.

*

She'd thought she had Root and The Machine figured out when she met her for the second time. Crazy geek obsessed with giant computer. And then, later, prophet and god. Interface and program. Every time she thinks she has them pinned down, another facet to their relationship emerges to fuck up her categorisation. Most recently, it's a fucking kids' game.

They're on a stakeout, her and Root, and it's been six hours alone in a car that smells overpoweringly of cheap air freshener. She'd demanded Root shut the fuck up after the first two hours, and she's been uncharacteristically agreeable. This is why it takes a minute for Sameen to react when Root first starts talking.

"The fence," she says, softly. And then, "The curtains on the house to the right."

"What?" Sameen asks, eyes automatically flicking towards the right, hand dropping to rest on her sidearm.

Root waves a hand absently. "I wasn't talking to you. The electric company van. ...It Absolutely is. Ok, be more specific then." she gasps out a breathless little laugh, hand coming to cover her mouth. "You're hilarious." She's obviously trying to come across sarcastic but the amusement in her eyes betrays her.

Sameen glares. "You wanna share the joke?"

"#78C7C7, ," Root says. "We're playing I Spy."

Sameen lets her head fall back against the seat. "Of course you are."

So Root keeps on for the next hour, babbling happily away to The Machine, always inordinately pleased with herself when it takes The Machine a few guesses to figure out Root's choice.

So: Crazy. prophet. Interface. Friend. Root changes identities like she changes clothes, it shouldn't be a surprise that this is true even of the identities that are her own.

Sameen will never admit it, but there are moments when she looks at Root and sees hardware. Times when Root moves all confidence and grace, duel-wielding guns and making every shot, or gliding through a perfectly timed series of events and people and locations always with the right information, the right paperwork, the right identity. Often, especially if she knows someone's watching, she looks positively delighted with herself and The Machine, proud and arrogant and there is a fucking reason she calls it God mode. But at other times Sameen will catch a glimpse of Root carrying out The Machine's directions and she looks so utterly content and at peace. It makes something in Sameen's stomach feel sort of hollow and sinking, and she has to look away.

Sameen walks in on her hacking something for The Machine late one evening, only the glow of the monitor reflecting off her glasses. Her hands are flying, teeth resting against her lower lip except when she mutters brief questions to The Machine. Sameen stays still in the doorway and watches, not sure why she isn't moving away.

Finally, Root lets out a soft breath and hits a final key with a bit of extra force. She flops backward, head hanging over the back of the chair so she can stare at Sameen upside-down. She's grinning, big and dopey and her pupils are blown when she meets Sameen's gaze.

"Hi," she says, her voice lazy and warm.

"Are you high?"

Root laughs lowly. "Not exactly. Sameen comes further into the room, feeling strangely ill-at-ease.

"Tough project?" she asks, jerking her head at the screen.

Root waves a hand languidly. "I suppose." she flicks her gaze off to the side. "No, I'm fine. You know physical contact doesn't make much of a difference for me."

Sameen is getting better at knowing when Root isn't talking to her. She hangs around for a couple hours and Root remains loose-limbed and smiling the whole time. It looks dangerously vulnerable. It looks nice.

*

Root paces into Sameen's apartment behind her, energy sparking like electricity off her with every movement. Her boots click against the tile, her leather jacket creaks when she tucks her hands behind her back. Sameen's breath is a little short, her cheeks feel flushed and her mouth is dry. She's not sure what this is, but she thinks maybe she wants to find out.

Sameen methodically removes her various weapons from around her person, setting them in a neat row on the kitchen counter. Behind her she's hyper-aware of Root moving, crossing to the table and then back again, followed by the familiar crunch as she bites into an apple. The hairs on the back of Sameen's neck feel on end, and she has to take a few seconds to breathe through the sensation of being exposed, of deliberately turning her back to someone who her mind still sees as a threat. It's a reasonable reaction. The threat is still there, it's only the context that's changed.

The last person she felt comfortable exposing her back to was Cole. If she actually sits down and examines her relationships, the one she had with Cole is most similar to whatever she's got with Root. And that's a hell of a lot more than she's got with anyone else. Talking with her leaves Sameen feeling energised. She trusts that when Root drags her off on adventures they'll be fun or at least important. She looks forward to seeing her. She'll make an effort to be supportive if she's sad or upset, even if she can't empathize or really understand the emotions. Sometimes she wonders if this is what love is like for her. Wonders if she was in love with Cole after all and just didn't have the framework to recognize it. Knows that the thought of losing Root makes her feel sick to her stomach and a bit light headed.

"Well," Root says, dragging her attention back to the present. "Tonight was certainly an adventure. Don't say I never take you anywhere fun."

"You're talking like the night's over," Sameen says, kicking her shoes off under the kitchen table and shrugging out of her coat. "which would be real disappointing."

Root stalks closer, long legs eating up the space between them in a few quick steps. She backs Sameen against the table, hands coming to rest on either side of her. Sameen's body shifts to accommodate her without conscious thought, her chin tipping back to keep eye contact, throat exposed. Root sucks in a breath, brings a hand up to stroke the side of Sameen's face, then settles her palm over the delicate skin above her collar bone. Sameen swallows and feels the pressure against the movement.

"Oh Sameen," she murmurs. "I would never want to disappoint you."

"Stop drinking my whisky when I'm not here," Sameen says immediately, and Root laughs, surprised and open, teeth flashing. She smells like cigarette smoke and cheap handsoap, and Sameen knows she's hiding a bullet graze under the arm of her jacket. Sameen wants, very much, to kiss her, to smear the over-dramatic red black of her lipstick that has somehow remained perfect all night. She stays still. Waits.

Root steps back, lets her hands fall to her sides. "Why don't you go get comfortable in the bedroom?"

Sameen's already tugging the elastic out of her hair. "Why don't you go make friends with a bottle of antiseptic? I know that asshole clipped you. Infection is never sexy."

"Yes, thank you, I already got the lecture on the way here," Root grumbles. Sameen grins.

"Nice to know She and I agree on some things."

Root smiles absently. "More than you might think, really."

Sameen ignores this last and heads into her room, taking the opportunity to kick her dirty clothes into the closet and move the disassembled rocket launcher off the foot of the bed. That done she strips down to her underwear and sports bra and flops backwards onto the bed. Then, thinking about the way Root had been watching her, she sits up. She frowns down at the floor for a moment, considering. This is either gonna go really well or really poorly, and she supposes if it goes poorly she can just punch Root in the face, so there's no real down side. Feeling a little silly she slides down onto her knees on the carpet, facing the door.

Root comes in a moment later, and her eyes track immediately to Sameen. She sucks in a breath, freezing in the doorway for a brief moment. Sameen tries and fails to restrain her smirk.

"Well," Root says softly. "You certainly look... comfortable."

Sameen stays quiet. Waits.

Root comes closer, and when she's standing in front of Sameen she reaches down to tilt her chin up. Her hands are cool, steady. "You don't have to do this just because it's what I want," she says. "I know this isn't really your thing, and if you don't want--"

Sameen leans forward far enough to scrape teeth across the fragile skin of Root's wrist, veins like wires under her tongue. "If I didn't want to do this, do you really think I'd be here?"

Root ducks her head. "You're right. Sorry."

"Safe word," says Sameen. "Mine's indigo."

Root nods slightly. "I'm good with traffic lights." She slides out of her jacket, leaving it in a pile on the floor, and bends gracefully to unzip her boots. Sameen stares at her ass. It's right fucking there.

When Root straightens, she takes a moment to study Sameen. She's not one for feeling self-conscious, so she settles her hands palm up on her thighs and meets Root's gaze steadily.

"You're so good," Root says under her breath, like it's a revelation, like she can't believe her luck. "Stay still."

She crosses over to the small desk in the corner where Sameen's laptop sits collecting dust. She opens the screen and powers it on, carefully shifting the angle until the camera is pointed right at the bed. Sameen is incredulous.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" She starts to stand, but Root spins on socked feet, viper fast.

"I said stay still." She doesn't raise her voice, but the order snaps across the room sharp and leaving no room for argument. Sameen drops back down hard, and she's surprised to feel the low thrum of arousal in her abdomen.

Root paces back over to her, perches on the bed and guides Sameen with a hand at her shoulder to face her. "I know you understand what an interface is," she says. "She's part of this, either way, I'm just letting her see. You've never seemed bothered before now, but if you need to safeword we can talk about this more extensively. We can do that no matter what, but if we continue tonight I want her to be able to see you."

Sameen's life is really fucking surreal. She exhales, trying not to roll her eyes. "Fine. It's fine."

Root stands up, running a hand over the crown of Sameen's head. "Thank you." She starts unbuttoning her shirt, briskly, eyes unfocused. "Sometimes I think about the future-- it's not unreasonable to assume the technology will be developed to let her see directly through my eyes. The implant already provides direct input for sound if I wear the external component, though it's not exactly comparable to what I had before." Sameen stays quiet. Root's fucked up transhumanist fantasies aside, she almost never talks about the consequences of her hearing loss, and the edge of something that might be regret in her voice is an unexpected vulnerability.

Root tosses her shirt aside, unzips her skirt and lets it slide down her legs, kicking it under the desk. "I know it's a bit science fiction, but I secretly hope one day there'll be a way to link up my brain to Her."

'It's not a fucking secret,' Sameen doesn't say. Root unclips her hair, adjusts the pillows on the bed. Sameen has the weirdly unsettling thought that this is probably the same way Root acts when she's preparing to torture someone. Hopefully without the undressing.

"Up on the bed," Root says. "Come on, on your back, hands on the headboard."

Sameen climbs up, stretches out. Root crouches beside the bed, spins a pair of handcuffs on her finger. Sameen's at the point where she doesn't even bother to wonder where she found them.

"The way things are going tonight I shouldn't need these," she says contemplatively. "But I really love how you looked when you're tied up."

She leans forward, face hovering close enough over Sameen's that she can feel the soft puff of her breath against her cheek. "Do you trust me?" she asks. The cuffs rest, open around Sameen's wrists, and the metal is the same temperature as Root's hands.

The question is, as most things with them, contextual, and so when Sameen says "Yes," she isn't lying. The cuffs click shut like the final key pressed on a keyboard.

Later, with Root pressed up against her back and three fingers deep inside of her, Sameen looks up through the curtain of her sweaty hair and the first thing she sees is the tiny red light on the laptop's camera, active and watching. Root's free hand is wrapped around her throat, and she lets gravity push her windpipe harder against the space between thumb and fingers. Root's still talking, a background buzz of words that Sameen can't focus enough to make out, and each brush of the sheets against her skin sends faint shutters of pain-pleasure flickering distantly across her nerves. The red light blinks steadily in time with Root's fingers inside of her, and Sameen tries to pull in a breath but can't.

Root says, "Let go," and digs her teeth hard into her shoulder, and Sameen does.

*

She remembers the second time she woke up to Root's voice, still foggy from drugs and tied to the steering wheel of a car, the incongruity in the tenderness in her tone.

"I'm sorry about that," soft like she'd never meant anything more honestly in her life, like she was afraid to disturb the bubble of quiet around the two of them, alone in the vehicle. Months later, Shaw had come down with a fever and, drifting towards wakefulness through incoherent dreams and unstable reality, she'd heard that same murmur, gentle in the quiet of her bedroom, and felt safe.

This time she isn't sick and Root's not an auditory hallucination, but the soothing hum of her voice still wraps around her like a soft blanket and a bullet-proof vest all in one.

"I brought you water," Root says, sitting on the edge of the bed. Sameen blinks up at her. Her wrists have been uncuffed at some point, and it takes a concentrated effort to reach up and take the glass that Root's holding out. Her whole body feels shaky, unreliable, and she thinks at any other time this would be worrying. Once the glass is empty Sameen slides further down under the blanket, tucking her chin down and curling closer against Root's hip. Root pets a hand through her hair gently and it helps make some of the shaking stop. Outside the window a siren passes, and a motor wheezes it's way to life. Root's eating another apple. Sameen thinks oneday Root will run on apples and electricity.

She shifts a bit so she can watch her eat, neat little bites that don't even leave a smear of juice on her lips. Root looks down at her, smiles a bit. She holds out the unbitten side of the apple.

"Want some?"

Sameen has to lean up to reach it, muscles in her neck protesting the strain. Her teeth break the skin of the fruit. Across the room, the light on the camera blinks steadily.


End file.
